Bathrooms and Waitresses

Cheesecake Factory

Some days are just good days.  You have a lunch date with a friend you haven't seen in a long time, at a restaurant you really like.

Cheesecake Factory usually puts us in a booth when I bring a service dog, but this time they put us at a four-top table in the center.  They explained that they didn't want us at a two top because there wouldn't be enough room for the dog.  I thought that was nice.  When we got to the table, our hostess offered to take a chair away, but I told her we were fine.  

Corky doesn't have the best settle, but he does ok.  True to form, he stood like a horse in a stall under the table. Sigh.  He's also not a puppy that takes kindly to you pressuring him to sit down.  He's either going to do it in his own time, or not.  There's just no way around it.  

He decided Michele's feet looked comfy and sat on them.

Our adorable waitress came up and nearly stepped on Corky and then nearly fell all over herself apologizing.  Turns our she has a golden and is a huge dog lover.  She was delightful.  She showed us photos of her puppy.  Very sweet.

Corky was very good under the table.  There were a few moments when he got up and wanted to stand and test out the standing, but he finally settled and fell asleep.

Bathrooms

After our nice lunch, we stopped by the bathrooms, which were all full.  The  first one to open was a regular stall, so Corky and I made our way in.  The stall was stall number one against the wall, so we only had one neighbor on our right side.

I had to scrunch us in and then turn Corky around so that he was facing the right hand side and I could close the stall door.  I hooked his leash up on the door with my purse.  

Corky poked a nose under the stall to the right.

"Oh!" Came the response from the woman in the stall to the right.  I could see her lovely shoes.

Pause.

I see a nicely manicured hand scratch Corky's chin. 

Corky sticks his whole head under the stall.

"No peeking! No Peeking!" The lady said in a laughing voice.  I pulled Corky back.  Thankfully, we were ready to go. 

If I timed it right, I could wash my hands and be out of there without meeting the person my guide dog puppy had seen in a delicate position!

I timed it right.  Thank God for automatic faucets!

Off the Wall Comments

Bathroom Habits

So, during AP US History, one of the junior boys raises his hand and asks, not for help finding a monograph or in determining whether a website is credible, but asks me: "I know this is off topic, but where does Coach go to the bathroom?"

Oh.

Well, I paused for a moment.  Then I pointed to the grass outside at the south of the library and the grass  to the north.  "He goes out there and there. And he also goes over in the pine straw by the Dimmitt Gym."

"OK."  He nodded and went back to work.

Change of Color

Earlier in the week I had a freshman class that was called for lightening, meaning that only three students showed up because the rest were being held on the other side of campus.  The four of us were having a great time talking about books and Coach.  Then Rachel, out of the blue said, "I love Coach best of all.  Sometimes I want him to have a pink coat so that only I can pet him."

Pink and black.  It is very fashionable.

Giant Balls in the Hallway

On another day when I arrived for class I happened to see giant balls in the hallway.  Now, it isn't every day that Coach gets an opportunity to interact with giant balls.  So, of course we had to run down and see what his reaction would be.

Coach went up and sniffed them.  Then he poked one a bit with his nose and it moved, but it didn't startle him.  He glanced up at me as if to say, "Yeah, it's a giant ball.  So what?"

Some days you just don't know what school will throw at you!  

The Reality of Bingo

Yesterday was a pretty good day. Bingo was on exceptionally good behavior. I had a student come into my office to practice with him to see if he would jump and he remained seated (good boy!). So he got some loving, which made everyone happy.

I also got some great news while I was tutoring a fellow faculty member on how to use Twitter (I'm cdmclean on Twitter, the SEGD trainers are DogguideTrainer). I was going through all the ins and outs of Twitter and was showing her the replies I had received when I noticed a reply I hadn't noticed before, it said: "I love you. You describe the pics. Esp since I'm blind. It's really nice." For all of you who don't know about Twitter, you are limited to 140 characters. So you have to be brief and to the point. (Note: I added punctuation to her reply and spelled out you. Stuff you leave out in Twitter! 8-) That made me feel really good. But I have to give credit where credit is due. When we started this blog, we didn't have captions. I only put captions on after reading Rebecca's blog Journey of a Southeastern Guide Dog Puppy. That's when I realized that we needed to be thinking differently, that we had a different audience than what I was used to writing for in my regular blog. So I started adding figure captions.

Fred came up with a way to make them smaller and connected with the photo. After I told him about Twitter comment, he started thinking about the software that the blind and visually impaired use to read web pages, so he went and looked up the proper way to do the captions.

So, if anyone else is doing a blog and you want everyone to be able to read your blog and know what is going on, here is the official way to put in captions:

In the code for your photo there will be an alt tag that looks like this: alt="" change it to title="" and in between the quotes type in the description on the photo. That is your caption. It will float over your photo and whenever anyone mouses over the photo, the caption will appear.

Now you might be wondering about the photo at the bottom of the blog. I've learned that with Bingo you have to be willing to open yourself up to lots of new experiences. Being ok picking up poo in public places, having long conversations with total strangers, it is all par for the course when you are raising a puppy for SEGDs. But yesterday was one of those moments when I thought, "Oh, what the hell. Sure. Take the photo."

Here's what happened. I stepped into the ladies faculty restroom at school and could hear Amparo and Katya (administrative assistant and French teacher/school counselor) talking in the hallway outside the restroom. Still talking, one of them opens the door, a big gasp follows, immediately followed by laughter and a closing door. Then the door opens again. A very sweet voice with a French accent asks, "May I please take a photo?"

Katya explained that until that moment when she saw Bingo poking his head out of the stall that she hadn't realized that he would be with his blind person every minute of the day, in every situation. (If it were any other bathroom, Bingo would be standing, but our bathrooms are spotless.)

What's a little dignity worth in the face of my coworker's epiphany?